For seven years a substantial advantage
in distance lay with the LCDR but the opening of the
new SER main line via Sevenoaks secured equality, the
LCDR 78 miles from London Victoria to Dover Harbour,
via the Medway Towns and Canterbury, being matched by
the SER 76˝ from Charing Cross to Dover Town.
On 15 June 1881 a direct link between
the SER Town and LCDR
Harbour Stations was
opened. This was a joint line of the two companies,
built as part of the Dover and Deal Joint Railway, which
connected the existing SER terminus at Deal with the
LCDR main line at Buckland Junction.
The two competing companies could
never agree to a complete merger but in 1899 economic
necessity forced them into a ‘Working Union’. In this
union the companies retained their separate existence
but for operating purposes their lines were managed
as one railway. The new grouping went by the name South
Eastern & Chatham Railway (SECR) but it was never a
company in its own right.
In 1909 work began on the new Marine
Station, was nearing completion when the First
World War broke out, and from 2 January 1915 it
was used for ambulance and other military traffic. Most
of this traffic approached from the LCDR route, as a
landslide between Folkestone and Dover in December 1915
closed the SER route until August 1919. Public use of
the Marine Station (for Continental traffic) began in
January 1920 with full domestic passenger services introduced
by 1922.
In January 1923 the
SER and LCDR were grouped, along with other railway
companies in the South of England, to form the Southern
Railway. After the grouping the railway layout of Dover
was simplified, passenger traffic for Dover itself was
concentrated on the Priory Station. The old Harbour
Station closed (the Town
Station had closed to civilian passengers in October
1914), and the approach lines to the Marine
Station were remodelled. The old engine sheds at
Dover Priory and Dover
Town were closed and consolidated into the new sheds
built near the site of the old Town Station. In 1936
a new Train Ferry Dock
was opened, enabling a sleeping car service between
London and Paris, the ‘Night
Ferry’, to be introduced.
During the Second
World War Dover’s railways played and important
role and suffered much damage. The Marine
Station saw heavy traffic during the evacuation
of Dunkirk,
handling hundreds of special troop and ambulance trains.
Both the Marine and Priory
Stations were damaged by bombing and shelling during
the war.
After the war the ‘Golden
Arrow’ service was reintroduced and services got
back to normal with cross-Channel traffic increasing.
In 1961 the lines around Dover were electrified as part
of the final phase of Kent Coast electrification and
steam haulage came to an end. The one exception to this
was on the Promenade
Railway where use of third-rail electrification
would not have been safe. Passenger traffic for Dover
is now handled exclusively by the Priory
Station after the Marine
Station closed in 1994.
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